Most MissSpellable Word - English?
I'm not a native English speaker but I tend to keep an eye on my spelling and grammar.
I recently misspelled "throw" as "throe", which, to my surprise, was a real word.
I learned a new word by accident.
So, I'm asking you, which words can be misspelled to create most new words?
To misspell a word, use the following rules:
$(1.)$ Replace a letter of the original word with a nearby one based on the QWERTY keyboard; this was the case of my misspell:
A "nearby" letter is the one you can reach from the initial letter without crossing any other letters, just to be clear.
$(2.)$ duplicate a letter of the original word (god + o = good)
- $(3.)$ leave out a letter of the original word (good - o = god)
- $(4.)$ insert an extra letter before or after any other letter (good + s = goods)
Each rule can be used 0 or 1 times when producing a single word;
- To be more specific, you can use a single rule A to get a word (god + 2. = good)
- a combination of $2$ different rules A,B (god + 2.,4. = goods)
- a combination of $3$ different rules A,B,C(god + 2.,3.,4. = odds)
- all four rules (god + 2.,1.,3.,4. = {godd, gode, ode, odes} = odes)
Edits:
- A plural of the word, such as god + s = gods, should be considered the same word?
- Rubio suggested: a tie is resolved with a shorter word winning. ( If still a tie, count the total number of rules used among all words and lesser rule count wins? )
Bonus Variation
In addition, you can play for a round 2 for example;
Once you've created all words you could from your initial word, you can apply the same game on each new word to create "second branched" words. You can play this up to some $n$ amount of branches and try to break the record for that $n$. In other words;
Can you find a word that branches the most when taking $n$ branches?
Edit: Note that the "bonus variation" is not necessary and can be ignored since it seems that the growth would be exponential and thus I do not see a good way to find the best branching word?